Inclusion for the Visually Impaired Student by using Immersive Reader

            This week’s blog is about assistive or adaptive technology for the visually impaired in a school. At the school I currently work, I am aware of two students in regular education classrooms that have a visual impairment. As the new media specialist, I thought it would be best to research technology to assist in their education and support their learning. I was in a professional development recently where they introduced “Microsoft Immersive Reader" as a tool for students. The following blog will discuss its features and uses for visually impaired students.

            “Immersive Reader is a full screen reading experience to increase readability of content in OneNote documents. Learning Tools is designed to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia in the classroom, but can support anyone who wants to make reading on their device easier.” In the Immersive Reader program, you are able to upload or take a snap picture of any form of text. Then you can change the font, the size, spacing between letters/words and the colors of the text or background. The program also reads the text to the individual if necessary. Immersive reader can also break apart the sentence by parts of speech and adds pictures in place of the words if additional vocabulary knowledge is needed. It has a picture dictionary for struggling readers that may not know the meaning of words. It can also translate the text in any language, which is helpful for (ESL) English as Second Language students. Readers can also highlight one line at time to read and change the speed of the text being read aloud.

            As a teacher, I could think of various ways to use Immersive Reader, especially with my ESL students or struggling readers. Teaching young ESL children to read is difficult without knowing the vocabulary in their own language so Immersive Reader can assist with pictures and translations. Our school will be one-to-one with devices next year each device has the Microsoft Bundle that includes Immersive Reader. The two students with vision impairments will have more of an equal opportunity to learn because of this program. Also, if we go full virtual learning, it will be easy to teach the students and their parents how to use the program. Neither of our visually impaired students are fully blind but need different accommodations for being able to see text. One student needs larger text and sometimes a darker background, which the program can do. The other student is slowly losing her vision and will need the text read aloud until she can learn Braille. The school library had purchased several books with larger print for these students but it is not nearly enough. I can imagine the possibilities with the “Immersive Reader” Program for their future education.

            This website has a video that gives a deeper look into Immersive Reader and another video that shows how a first grade teacher uses the program in her classroom with all of her students. https://schoolsict.co.uk/what-we-do/office-365/learning-tools/immersive-reader

Resources:

Use immersive reader for one note (n.d.) Retrieved from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-immersive-reader-for-onenote-10712138-b4ed-4513-958d-d9a1b3038170